In general, fan motors mean motors used for circulating fluids or forcedly sending air. In a case of the fan motor used in a refrigerator, such as a fridge, out of such fan motors, when moisture infiltrates into the fan motor, it may cause trouble or malfunction of electronic or mechanical parts inside the motor, and hence, it is very important to prevent infiltration of moisture.
Moreover, a bearing is used in order to rotatably support a rotary shaft of the fan motor to a bracket to rotate a fan, but it may cause a deterioration of productivity because it is very difficult to assemble the bearing to the bracket.
In the meantime, lubricating oil is supplied to the bearing in order to smoothly rotate the rotary shaft. A fixed quantity of the lubricating oil is stored in a felt, and then, is directly supplied to the bearing. In this instance, in order to prevent a leakage of oil to one end portion of the bearing, namely, in a direction of a rotor, an oil return washer is joined to the rotary shaft, and a conventional oil return washer is illustrated in FIGS. 7 and 8.
As shown in FIGS. 7 and 8, the conventional oil return washer 35′ includes: a ring-shaped base ring 35a allowing the rotary shaft to penetrate through the center thereof; and a tubular small diameter part 35c connected integrally with the base ring 35a. The outer diameter of the base ring 35a is larger than that of the small diameter part 35c, and the rotary shaft of the motor penetrates through the small diameter part 35c and the base ring 35a. The small diameter part 35c and the base ring 35a are generally made of one of soft plastic materials.
The conventional oil return washer 35′ has a problem in that oil spills toward the rotor of the center of the motor because oil flows toward the small diameter part 35c after going over the base ring 35a of the oil return washer along the surface of the bearing when the motor rotates at high speed. Accordingly, measures for preventing spill of oil are needed.
Accordingly, in order to solve the above problem, the inventors of the present invention propose a fan motor of a new structure, which has a news structure of an oil return washer and a space formed in a bracket for mounting a cover for a printed circuit board (PCB), makes an assembly of a bearing easy, and enhances assembly and productivity of the whole fan motor.